FMA fic: Samadhi and The Physics Of This
samadhi
fullmetal alchemist
roy/ed, NC-17
disclaimer: this was rather inevitable. it still doesn't mean I own anything, or profit from this venture, etc, etc.
:::
Roy's personal library is big and metallic and dark, lit by high fraught windows and dusty old lamps. Ed loves the way their voices crack and echo off the ceiling, the solid, curved weight of the book spines pressed against his back and how he can follow the faint lines of their handprints all over the shiny wood tabletops in the morning. They don't talk about it --they don't need to-- because it's still there, in a brush of fingertips in a hallway or while Ed leans his forehead against the cool shower tile and just. Remembers.
:::
It's resonance. A steady, warm echo that rings in his ears and shiver-hums in his chest. He decides that he prefers it this way; an open-mouthed daze, with Roy's tongue dragging slowly along the roof of his mouth as his toes curl and everything hangs wet and electric when they pull apart. And, really, no matter how you may be looking at it, it was still one helluva way to say hello.
"It's good to know I can still catch you offguard," Roy says and his lips twist sardonic, linger against his own.
Bastard, Ed thinks, only half-heartedly, because well. Yeah. Get it right and be honest, it's a little too good, a little too everything to let go of just yet. He rolls his hips in lieu of an insult, a slow slide of fabric that sparks stars behind his eyes and cages a sharp exhale at the back of Roy's throat.
"There was a distinct lack of 'catching', Colonel, the books and I could hear you coming a mile away," Ed hisses through his teeth, hopes it sounds frantic-angry and not frantic-desperate, "it was a blatant attack--" Roy hums, amused, his tongue tracing the curve between Ed's ear and jawline, "underhanded," stray hands scorch up Ed's spine, twist under his shirt, "...and totally unfair."
Roy grins faintly, presses Ed harder against the edge of the table and drags a slow, shaky index finger along the heated swell of Ed's pants, "I'm having a really hard time believing you have a problem with it, Fullmetal."
Ed's hands reach over the rough cotton of the dress shirt (a debauched sort of wrinkled now) to tangle in Roy's collar, wrenching them together, nose to nose, just close enough for Ed to sweep his lips down the curl of Roy's ear, "If you ever stopped being so damned irritating I'd start to worry. You have a," he flails a illustrating hand, "Colonel Mustang image. Thing. To maintain." Kisses him again. Hard. Nothing slow and sweet about it this time, all teeth and desperation, with a hot slide of tongue that makes Ed's knees want to buckle and his head spin.
Roy's leg comes up in response, destroying Ed's tenuous balance and as he tumble-falls-sprawls onto the table he wraps his fingers around the back of Roy's neck, drags him down in a flurry of limbs and frantic hands. He laughs as he goes, tightly hysterical, because he knows this is ridiculous. They both do. Black and white and wrong all over. There are explicit rules about it; fra-tern-ization, section c, sub-section 356 in the Big Book Of What Not To Do To A Superior Officer (Or Vice Versa). They were both ignoring the tiny postscript that states this infraction would strip them of their pretty silver watches and their eternal souls.
He wonders if it's wrong that he's more concerned about the watch.
Ed doesn't feel the emphatic snap of his head and back hitting the wood, just hears the echo of it shoot off the walls and pool on the ceiling. He stares up after it for a second, up there at some point he can't even see, and drinks in the sensation of Roy's body pressed along him and the hammering skip of their heartbeats thumping deafening in his ears. Roy feels like he always does, heavy and warm and somehow, Ed waxes delirious, full of tea.
The heel of Roy's palm starts pushing up at his shirt and Ed comes gasping uselessly out of his stupor just as Roy's lips begin to trace a wet and feverish-hot path up the uncovered skin. Ed lets his hands slide up to flick and curse their way along Roy's shirt, and he hates each button passingly as he fights them free. Pauses, trembling, to hate the military even more for their ugly foresight. Out of the corner of his eye he sees his own shirt tossed wide to the left, swallowing up the "Morals Of Alchemy" text lying on the floor while his pants land to the right, pooling around the thick black volume simply labelled "Logistics". Gone (in more ways than one). Forgotten to the teeth now stinging across his collarbone.
Roy has scars, twelve of them, Ed has counted them with his tongue before, has lifted his eyebrows at Roy's muted expression on the matter whenever he baits; "Mine are bigger." He runs his thumb down the one that stretches across Roy's hipbone and Roy shivers, arcs his flushed skin up into an unsteady thrust of movement, forces them into syrupy momentum; a slow, lazy rocking of limbs that punctuates the rising throb of heat that mumbles down Ed's spine and collects there. Ed's fingers scramble white-knuckled along the table as the tempo begins to pick up, shattering straight through need into mounting desperation with a sharp push and catch of hips. The lights throbbing blue and bright behind his eyes begin to flicker intense as a hand slides up between his legs, drifting up his thigh, and stroking until his mind begins to blur. Soon. He presses that fact onto Roy's skin; soon. Lets his eyes roll to the ceiling to tell it too; soon. He leans in hopefully when Roy grazes his cheek with a quick sloppy kiss, but then--
the hands are gone, all too gone, suddenly, and there's nothing. Ed feels Roy's weight lift off of him and hears him thud away with winding, uncertain footsteps.
"Where'd you--" Ed looks up, addled, and his teeth click together when he sees Roy hovering nearby, tiny tube in hand and standing haloed bright with lines of sweat and angry red daybreak. Ed feels a groan rumble in his chest and he flails an arm out pathetically, croaks, "Roy." Then clears his throat and tries again in unfocussed frustration, deliriously searching for words. Language. Something vaguely demand like. Get your ass back here now.
Roy sways back, all in the hips --because simply walking isn't Roy enough, oh no-- and Ed drops his hand suddenly, swiftly catching Roy's fingers just as they move to brush over him. Roy's eyes snap up in surprise, "You sure know how to ruin a moment, Fullmetal."
Ed rubs a thumb along the fragile skin on the underside of Roy's wrist, and squeezes tight, his smile rare with edges, "No." He reaches out and pops the lube lid with a flick of a thumb, "I can do it."
He dribbles a bit of it over his palm, lets it run cool and shiny and slick along the pads of his fingers as he twines his hand into Roy's with a smooth, wet caress. Ed's lifts his gaze, searches out Roy's ("watching?") as he guides their hands down, down, down over shivering skin and Roy's pupils are widening, soaking black and dancing wild as --slowly, deliberately-- Ed leads Roy's fingers inside him. Ed's neck stretches back at the familiar burn, the smooth slide of movement, and he purrs (Roy following the vibration with his tongue), shoving his hips up and driving deeper in a silent, breathless coax.
Something incoherent begins to rage at the back of Ed's mind as the pressure suddenly changes, becomes thicker, and Roy mutters "stay with me" against the skin of his shoulder as he pushes, slides in, slides down, in one smooth movement that causes a strained stream of obscenties to roll from Ed's dry lips and bounce ad infinitum off the ceiling.
"Hmmmm," Roy mumbles and tips his forehead into Ed's temple, breathes against his cheek. Ed presses his head back into the wood as he pulls in a long shuddering breath, whispers "now" and shifts his hips. Just. There. And it's more than before, much much much more, a twisting imperfect rhythm that burns behind his eyelids. Ed's back arches up from the table as the blood pounds in his ears, boom boom boom, and Roy's hands twitch and grip feebly against his hips. Roy reaches down between them, frees Ed's hand from its death grip on the table edge and brings their fingers together around Ed in an uneven, desperate upward stroke of onetwothree. Rough and hard, just enough. It's anticipation, the worst kind, shiny and tight and right there and Roy's thrusts are becoming staccato, frenzied, pushing again, hard, one last time and--
And.
--somewhere between one heartbeat and the next, it's enough, it's everything all at once, finally, and Roy suddenly stiffens above him, tightening in a sweat licked slide. Ed clings as hard as he can because he's falling, lost in the static and the light and the absolute shattering behind his eyes. There's a wild cry ripping up the back of throat but it misses the air, gets caught up in Roy's wordless, open kiss that is shaped like Ed's name and then tangles in the big, messy descent of It's Over.
Roy lands beside him with a slick flop and Ed breathes, really breathes, to the lowest depths of lungs, blinking furiously as the light above him swims in and out of focus signalling The End in its own bright, intrusive way.
It's too quiet now, Ed thinks and closes his eyes. He listens to the sound of a moth clinking against the lightbulb, once, twice, again and loses himself in the heavy slow exchange of their breathing, back and forth, forth and back. It reminds him of the ocean. He feels, somehow, that he should be babbling now, or something, because he's starting to dwell on useless, fuzzy things like happiness. Because he is. Happy, that is. And god, Roy would be appalled.
There's a glide of sweat-sticky lips across his forehead and Ed opens an eye, makes a bunched up expression of distaste when he realizes Roy is staring at him. The furrowed anxiety lining Roy's face seems to soften for a moment and his eyes drop, lips opening in empty sound and back stiff with intention. It flounders around for a beat, or two, until Roy shakes his head and his mouth snaps shut, curling up into an ironic grin.
Ed snorts, "You weren't about to say something sappy were you?" he flops his automail arm across the table with a heavy rattle, fingers twitching towards the window and its sunset of violent red and red on orange, head and body stretching to the warmth of the fading day, "Something about how great I look sprawled out all over your ugly, expensive furniture?"
Roy laughs and rolls on top of him, "Absolutely not."
"Alright," he presses his nose and hands into Roy's neck, tangles his fingers in the damp hair and inhales the smell of him, "Good." Hesitates then, because it sounds weak and his throat feels strangely thick, "neither was I."
:::
fin.
This felt...incomplete and anti-climatic when I finished it. And it sounds a bit like a Marvin Gaye song. For those who may be wondering, no, I am in no way afraid of the word "cock" or against using it in fics, it's just when I start throwing porn into new fandoms I usually like to test the waters to see what's too much and what's not enough. My stuff tends to be a bit more explicit in nature but we'll see how it goes. XD
the physics of this
fullmetal alchemist
roy/ed, pg-13
disclaimer: an unabashed fluff ficlet! with characters I don't own in any way!
The bench was a little too hard beneath him, the snow a little too cold along his nose and this, he thought, this should be a lot easier.
There really ought to be a manual for it, or something, because he couldn't be expected to just know, human biological imperative or no. There were instructions for everything else that man had conceived; alchemy and childcare and How To Make A Chocolate Souflee In Twenty Minutes Or Less. This should, by all that was right and good in the world, be much easier than a souflee. Even one that could be potentially made in twenty minutes.
He wondered what Al would do. He thought vaguely about running away to call and ask.
Winry had once spent the better part of an hour waxing wistful about the Right Time and You Just Know! Like it's right there, Ed, shining right in front of your eyes and you can just taste it and oh, oh it's just perfect. Perfect. Ed had rolled his eyes, made a derisive noise and filed it away as female blatherings of the worst possible sort. Because, really, there was absolutely no need to fill his head with pink and fluffy eared romanticisitic delusions when there was physical matter to rebuild. Except now there was something tingling rather insistently at the bottom of his stomach and everything around here was so damn...damn pretty and god, where was Winry and the high-pitched poetics when he needed them?
He stifled a sigh and tipped his head back to stare at the snowflakes tumbling from the sky. They ended their short lives caught, melting, on his eyelashes.
This was stupid. He was Edward Elric, State Alchemist. If killers and empty assassin armour hadn't frightened him, half a foot of park bench shouldn't leave him feeling so useless and pathetic. Or trembling, which he was. He had just been blaming it on the cold. He wondered if he could simply forego this whole hand holding bit by leaning over and licking him. Right on the neck. He was always one for skipping a few steps in the character evolution process.
Then again, maybe not.
Alright, he could do this, really and truly and honestly. He took a deep breath (okayokayokay), tried very hard not to choke on it and slid his fingers over.
Roy shifted slightly in response, a barely perceptible movement, but it was enough to root the hesitation in and Ed watched, in hysterical disbelief, as his hand dropped mid-approach to flop loudly onto the wood, curling itself forlornly into a fist. On the other side of the bench, Roy spared Ed an odd look out of the corner of his eye and then went back to staring at the trees. Ed scowled at the fresh silence that had collapsed in around them, felt incredibly idiotic and promptly contemplated the valour of whipping off screaming into the night.
That had went well.
Roy was obviously not seeing the world encompassing importance of this. Ed blinked. Right, so. What exactly was the importance then? Was this even explainable? Understandable? Categoric? He certainly had his reason, sure, and maybe it wasn't the most brilliant one but well.
(Undefinable? never.)
It was because he wanted to, because he knew he could if he just. Did it. Because as strange and new as this wrenching, desperate feeling was, he liked it, dammit, and he knew if he just reached over and took stupid stupid stupid Roy Mustang's hand it could be even better. It could be more. It could be what he sometimes saw when he closed his eyes at night.
The consequences stumbled drunkenly out the door.
He reached across the bench. Didn't look. Decided not to breathe because that hurt a little too much.
His fingertips tucked themselves under Roy's palm, pushed it up to crawl underneath and there--the hands twined easily, as if they were meant to fit together, warm and rough with the slide of fabric. Ed wanted to smile.
Roy glanced down at Ed's pathetically twitching fingers and lifted an eyebrow. Well, that was expected. Exactly expected, as Roy's entire plethora of facial expressions went from Condescending Quizzical to Angry Quizzical to Well Edward Elric Is Initiating Intimate Interaction, How About That Quizzical. It shouldn't have been surprising, but it was. And awkward. And um, if Roy would just say something then maybe Ed could finally exhale and the alarming tightening at the back of his chest might go away.
"Well?" Ed snapped. Hoped it was edgy enough to sound like a dare. Hoped, if anything, that it would clear that unreadable brightness out of Roy's eyes so--that--
That--the hand beneath his tightened, suddenly, and there was a warm rush of breath across his face, along his nose. A faint touch of lips. And then Roy. Roy was kissing him.
Ed sighed into it, felt his mind smooth out with a surprised "um" as he let the warmth melt down his spine. Somewhere in the shockwaves, he realized he could sense the wet lick of snow on his cheeks, hear the heavy thump thump thump of the blood pounding in his ears and feel the way Roy's tongue was curling a lazy path along the roof his mouth. He decided he really liked this version of equivalent trade.
"Do you always have to win?" Ed asked as they pulled apart, breathless, astounded, and then he did it again. Just to even the score.
fin.
fullmetal alchemist
roy/ed, NC-17
disclaimer: this was rather inevitable. it still doesn't mean I own anything, or profit from this venture, etc, etc.
:::
Roy's personal library is big and metallic and dark, lit by high fraught windows and dusty old lamps. Ed loves the way their voices crack and echo off the ceiling, the solid, curved weight of the book spines pressed against his back and how he can follow the faint lines of their handprints all over the shiny wood tabletops in the morning. They don't talk about it --they don't need to-- because it's still there, in a brush of fingertips in a hallway or while Ed leans his forehead against the cool shower tile and just. Remembers.
:::
It's resonance. A steady, warm echo that rings in his ears and shiver-hums in his chest. He decides that he prefers it this way; an open-mouthed daze, with Roy's tongue dragging slowly along the roof of his mouth as his toes curl and everything hangs wet and electric when they pull apart. And, really, no matter how you may be looking at it, it was still one helluva way to say hello.
"It's good to know I can still catch you offguard," Roy says and his lips twist sardonic, linger against his own.
Bastard, Ed thinks, only half-heartedly, because well. Yeah. Get it right and be honest, it's a little too good, a little too everything to let go of just yet. He rolls his hips in lieu of an insult, a slow slide of fabric that sparks stars behind his eyes and cages a sharp exhale at the back of Roy's throat.
"There was a distinct lack of 'catching', Colonel, the books and I could hear you coming a mile away," Ed hisses through his teeth, hopes it sounds frantic-angry and not frantic-desperate, "it was a blatant attack--" Roy hums, amused, his tongue tracing the curve between Ed's ear and jawline, "underhanded," stray hands scorch up Ed's spine, twist under his shirt, "...and totally unfair."
Roy grins faintly, presses Ed harder against the edge of the table and drags a slow, shaky index finger along the heated swell of Ed's pants, "I'm having a really hard time believing you have a problem with it, Fullmetal."
Ed's hands reach over the rough cotton of the dress shirt (a debauched sort of wrinkled now) to tangle in Roy's collar, wrenching them together, nose to nose, just close enough for Ed to sweep his lips down the curl of Roy's ear, "If you ever stopped being so damned irritating I'd start to worry. You have a," he flails a illustrating hand, "Colonel Mustang image. Thing. To maintain." Kisses him again. Hard. Nothing slow and sweet about it this time, all teeth and desperation, with a hot slide of tongue that makes Ed's knees want to buckle and his head spin.
Roy's leg comes up in response, destroying Ed's tenuous balance and as he tumble-falls-sprawls onto the table he wraps his fingers around the back of Roy's neck, drags him down in a flurry of limbs and frantic hands. He laughs as he goes, tightly hysterical, because he knows this is ridiculous. They both do. Black and white and wrong all over. There are explicit rules about it; fra-tern-ization, section c, sub-section 356 in the Big Book Of What Not To Do To A Superior Officer (Or Vice Versa). They were both ignoring the tiny postscript that states this infraction would strip them of their pretty silver watches and their eternal souls.
He wonders if it's wrong that he's more concerned about the watch.
Ed doesn't feel the emphatic snap of his head and back hitting the wood, just hears the echo of it shoot off the walls and pool on the ceiling. He stares up after it for a second, up there at some point he can't even see, and drinks in the sensation of Roy's body pressed along him and the hammering skip of their heartbeats thumping deafening in his ears. Roy feels like he always does, heavy and warm and somehow, Ed waxes delirious, full of tea.
The heel of Roy's palm starts pushing up at his shirt and Ed comes gasping uselessly out of his stupor just as Roy's lips begin to trace a wet and feverish-hot path up the uncovered skin. Ed lets his hands slide up to flick and curse their way along Roy's shirt, and he hates each button passingly as he fights them free. Pauses, trembling, to hate the military even more for their ugly foresight. Out of the corner of his eye he sees his own shirt tossed wide to the left, swallowing up the "Morals Of Alchemy" text lying on the floor while his pants land to the right, pooling around the thick black volume simply labelled "Logistics". Gone (in more ways than one). Forgotten to the teeth now stinging across his collarbone.
Roy has scars, twelve of them, Ed has counted them with his tongue before, has lifted his eyebrows at Roy's muted expression on the matter whenever he baits; "Mine are bigger." He runs his thumb down the one that stretches across Roy's hipbone and Roy shivers, arcs his flushed skin up into an unsteady thrust of movement, forces them into syrupy momentum; a slow, lazy rocking of limbs that punctuates the rising throb of heat that mumbles down Ed's spine and collects there. Ed's fingers scramble white-knuckled along the table as the tempo begins to pick up, shattering straight through need into mounting desperation with a sharp push and catch of hips. The lights throbbing blue and bright behind his eyes begin to flicker intense as a hand slides up between his legs, drifting up his thigh, and stroking until his mind begins to blur. Soon. He presses that fact onto Roy's skin; soon. Lets his eyes roll to the ceiling to tell it too; soon. He leans in hopefully when Roy grazes his cheek with a quick sloppy kiss, but then--
the hands are gone, all too gone, suddenly, and there's nothing. Ed feels Roy's weight lift off of him and hears him thud away with winding, uncertain footsteps.
"Where'd you--" Ed looks up, addled, and his teeth click together when he sees Roy hovering nearby, tiny tube in hand and standing haloed bright with lines of sweat and angry red daybreak. Ed feels a groan rumble in his chest and he flails an arm out pathetically, croaks, "Roy." Then clears his throat and tries again in unfocussed frustration, deliriously searching for words. Language. Something vaguely demand like. Get your ass back here now.
Roy sways back, all in the hips --because simply walking isn't Roy enough, oh no-- and Ed drops his hand suddenly, swiftly catching Roy's fingers just as they move to brush over him. Roy's eyes snap up in surprise, "You sure know how to ruin a moment, Fullmetal."
Ed rubs a thumb along the fragile skin on the underside of Roy's wrist, and squeezes tight, his smile rare with edges, "No." He reaches out and pops the lube lid with a flick of a thumb, "I can do it."
He dribbles a bit of it over his palm, lets it run cool and shiny and slick along the pads of his fingers as he twines his hand into Roy's with a smooth, wet caress. Ed's lifts his gaze, searches out Roy's ("watching?") as he guides their hands down, down, down over shivering skin and Roy's pupils are widening, soaking black and dancing wild as --slowly, deliberately-- Ed leads Roy's fingers inside him. Ed's neck stretches back at the familiar burn, the smooth slide of movement, and he purrs (Roy following the vibration with his tongue), shoving his hips up and driving deeper in a silent, breathless coax.
Something incoherent begins to rage at the back of Ed's mind as the pressure suddenly changes, becomes thicker, and Roy mutters "stay with me" against the skin of his shoulder as he pushes, slides in, slides down, in one smooth movement that causes a strained stream of obscenties to roll from Ed's dry lips and bounce ad infinitum off the ceiling.
"Hmmmm," Roy mumbles and tips his forehead into Ed's temple, breathes against his cheek. Ed presses his head back into the wood as he pulls in a long shuddering breath, whispers "now" and shifts his hips. Just. There. And it's more than before, much much much more, a twisting imperfect rhythm that burns behind his eyelids. Ed's back arches up from the table as the blood pounds in his ears, boom boom boom, and Roy's hands twitch and grip feebly against his hips. Roy reaches down between them, frees Ed's hand from its death grip on the table edge and brings their fingers together around Ed in an uneven, desperate upward stroke of onetwothree. Rough and hard, just enough. It's anticipation, the worst kind, shiny and tight and right there and Roy's thrusts are becoming staccato, frenzied, pushing again, hard, one last time and--
And.
--somewhere between one heartbeat and the next, it's enough, it's everything all at once, finally, and Roy suddenly stiffens above him, tightening in a sweat licked slide. Ed clings as hard as he can because he's falling, lost in the static and the light and the absolute shattering behind his eyes. There's a wild cry ripping up the back of throat but it misses the air, gets caught up in Roy's wordless, open kiss that is shaped like Ed's name and then tangles in the big, messy descent of It's Over.
Roy lands beside him with a slick flop and Ed breathes, really breathes, to the lowest depths of lungs, blinking furiously as the light above him swims in and out of focus signalling The End in its own bright, intrusive way.
It's too quiet now, Ed thinks and closes his eyes. He listens to the sound of a moth clinking against the lightbulb, once, twice, again and loses himself in the heavy slow exchange of their breathing, back and forth, forth and back. It reminds him of the ocean. He feels, somehow, that he should be babbling now, or something, because he's starting to dwell on useless, fuzzy things like happiness. Because he is. Happy, that is. And god, Roy would be appalled.
There's a glide of sweat-sticky lips across his forehead and Ed opens an eye, makes a bunched up expression of distaste when he realizes Roy is staring at him. The furrowed anxiety lining Roy's face seems to soften for a moment and his eyes drop, lips opening in empty sound and back stiff with intention. It flounders around for a beat, or two, until Roy shakes his head and his mouth snaps shut, curling up into an ironic grin.
Ed snorts, "You weren't about to say something sappy were you?" he flops his automail arm across the table with a heavy rattle, fingers twitching towards the window and its sunset of violent red and red on orange, head and body stretching to the warmth of the fading day, "Something about how great I look sprawled out all over your ugly, expensive furniture?"
Roy laughs and rolls on top of him, "Absolutely not."
"Alright," he presses his nose and hands into Roy's neck, tangles his fingers in the damp hair and inhales the smell of him, "Good." Hesitates then, because it sounds weak and his throat feels strangely thick, "neither was I."
:::
fin.
This felt...incomplete and anti-climatic when I finished it. And it sounds a bit like a Marvin Gaye song. For those who may be wondering, no, I am in no way afraid of the word "cock" or against using it in fics, it's just when I start throwing porn into new fandoms I usually like to test the waters to see what's too much and what's not enough. My stuff tends to be a bit more explicit in nature but we'll see how it goes. XD
the physics of this
fullmetal alchemist
roy/ed, pg-13
disclaimer: an unabashed fluff ficlet! with characters I don't own in any way!
The bench was a little too hard beneath him, the snow a little too cold along his nose and this, he thought, this should be a lot easier.
There really ought to be a manual for it, or something, because he couldn't be expected to just know, human biological imperative or no. There were instructions for everything else that man had conceived; alchemy and childcare and How To Make A Chocolate Souflee In Twenty Minutes Or Less. This should, by all that was right and good in the world, be much easier than a souflee. Even one that could be potentially made in twenty minutes.
He wondered what Al would do. He thought vaguely about running away to call and ask.
Winry had once spent the better part of an hour waxing wistful about the Right Time and You Just Know! Like it's right there, Ed, shining right in front of your eyes and you can just taste it and oh, oh it's just perfect. Perfect. Ed had rolled his eyes, made a derisive noise and filed it away as female blatherings of the worst possible sort. Because, really, there was absolutely no need to fill his head with pink and fluffy eared romanticisitic delusions when there was physical matter to rebuild. Except now there was something tingling rather insistently at the bottom of his stomach and everything around here was so damn...damn pretty and god, where was Winry and the high-pitched poetics when he needed them?
He stifled a sigh and tipped his head back to stare at the snowflakes tumbling from the sky. They ended their short lives caught, melting, on his eyelashes.
This was stupid. He was Edward Elric, State Alchemist. If killers and empty assassin armour hadn't frightened him, half a foot of park bench shouldn't leave him feeling so useless and pathetic. Or trembling, which he was. He had just been blaming it on the cold. He wondered if he could simply forego this whole hand holding bit by leaning over and licking him. Right on the neck. He was always one for skipping a few steps in the character evolution process.
Then again, maybe not.
Alright, he could do this, really and truly and honestly. He took a deep breath (okayokayokay), tried very hard not to choke on it and slid his fingers over.
Roy shifted slightly in response, a barely perceptible movement, but it was enough to root the hesitation in and Ed watched, in hysterical disbelief, as his hand dropped mid-approach to flop loudly onto the wood, curling itself forlornly into a fist. On the other side of the bench, Roy spared Ed an odd look out of the corner of his eye and then went back to staring at the trees. Ed scowled at the fresh silence that had collapsed in around them, felt incredibly idiotic and promptly contemplated the valour of whipping off screaming into the night.
That had went well.
Roy was obviously not seeing the world encompassing importance of this. Ed blinked. Right, so. What exactly was the importance then? Was this even explainable? Understandable? Categoric? He certainly had his reason, sure, and maybe it wasn't the most brilliant one but well.
(Undefinable? never.)
It was because he wanted to, because he knew he could if he just. Did it. Because as strange and new as this wrenching, desperate feeling was, he liked it, dammit, and he knew if he just reached over and took stupid stupid stupid Roy Mustang's hand it could be even better. It could be more. It could be what he sometimes saw when he closed his eyes at night.
The consequences stumbled drunkenly out the door.
He reached across the bench. Didn't look. Decided not to breathe because that hurt a little too much.
His fingertips tucked themselves under Roy's palm, pushed it up to crawl underneath and there--the hands twined easily, as if they were meant to fit together, warm and rough with the slide of fabric. Ed wanted to smile.
Roy glanced down at Ed's pathetically twitching fingers and lifted an eyebrow. Well, that was expected. Exactly expected, as Roy's entire plethora of facial expressions went from Condescending Quizzical to Angry Quizzical to Well Edward Elric Is Initiating Intimate Interaction, How About That Quizzical. It shouldn't have been surprising, but it was. And awkward. And um, if Roy would just say something then maybe Ed could finally exhale and the alarming tightening at the back of his chest might go away.
"Well?" Ed snapped. Hoped it was edgy enough to sound like a dare. Hoped, if anything, that it would clear that unreadable brightness out of Roy's eyes so--that--
That--the hand beneath his tightened, suddenly, and there was a warm rush of breath across his face, along his nose. A faint touch of lips. And then Roy. Roy was kissing him.
Ed sighed into it, felt his mind smooth out with a surprised "um" as he let the warmth melt down his spine. Somewhere in the shockwaves, he realized he could sense the wet lick of snow on his cheeks, hear the heavy thump thump thump of the blood pounding in his ears and feel the way Roy's tongue was curling a lazy path along the roof his mouth. He decided he really liked this version of equivalent trade.
"Do you always have to win?" Ed asked as they pulled apart, breathless, astounded, and then he did it again. Just to even the score.
fin.